Comics are Still Gay

So at the beginning of the month, I posted this article on the hype of homosexuals in comics all because of making Alan Scott the new version of the original Green Lantern gay.

Today, I read this article from Comics Alliance.  I'm proud of myself for naming as many as I did in the DC Universe, but I totally flaked on DC's peripheral titles.

Midnighter and Apollo?  Totally blanked on.  But they were originally created as a homosexual spoof on Batman and Superman.

And I didn't even think of the gay characters in Sandman or The Invisibles.

Still, it just goes to show that making Alan Scott gay was simply pandering.

iTunes Top 25

So this evening I was reading this article on Gizmodo, and I just had to look at my top 25 tracks on iTunes with the number of plays.

1. Static-X – Ostegolation – 18
2. James M. Venable – Going Away Party (Clerks 2) – 17
3. The Devil’s Song – Marcy’s Playground – 17
4. My Chemical Romance – It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Deathwish – 17
5. The Bloodhound Gang – No Hard Feelings – 16
6. Jason Mewes – Jay’s Chant (Clerks) – 16
7. Good Charlotte – Complicated – 16
8. Jonathon Coulton – IKEA – 16
9. Wings – Baby’s Request – 16
10. Billy Idol – Plastic Jesus – 15
11. Breaking Benjamin – Polyamorous – 15
12. Breaking Benjamin – Firefly – 15
13. Def Leppard – 10538 Overture – 15
14. Good Charlotte – Boys and Girls – 15
15. Jeremy Irons – Be Prepared (Lion King) – 15
16. Jim Sturgess – I’ve Just Seen a Face (Across the Universe) – 15
17. Joe Satriani – Raspberry Jam Delta-V – 15
18. Jonathon Coulton – Code Monkey – 15
19. The Offspring – She’s Got Issues – 15
20. The Pointer Sisters – Be There (Beverly Hills Cop II) – 15
21. The Pussycat Dolls – Lights, Camera, Action – 15
22. Sum 41 – Fat Lip – 15
23. Van Halen – Get Up – 15
24. 30 Seconds to Mars – Oblivion – 15
25. The All-American Rejects – Real World – 14

And this all works out pretty well except that #25 times with a bunch of other songs with 14 plays but gets this spot because of alphabetical sorting by artist.

The pint of the article, based on a comedian’s tweet is that many people might be embarrassed by the songs in their top 25 plays.

I’m not really embarrassed, more intrigued by which ones made it.

Strangely enough, “Be Prepared”, will actually go up in the list because I heard it on my iPod about half an hour ago.

Also another odd thought, is that I “discovered” Breaking Benjamin from the song “Firefly” when I was looking for the title song (by Joss Whedon) for the TV show “Firefly”.
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And one additional odd discovery is that I have never tagged “Firefly" before.
Of that, I am embarrassed.  Or possibly ashamed.

Whoosh

So I woke up this morning full of hope.  At 7 AM the weather listed the wind as “Still”.  Cool.

So I read my comics, and some of my news, had cinnamon toast, and then got ready for a ride.

By then the weather had it up to 9 mph.  By the time I got to the trail, it was back up into the teens.

So I decided I would turn around at Golden Gate Fields.  However, when I got there, I couldn’t deny myself the thrill of a speedy downhill, so I worked my way to the top and back of the parking lot, enjoyed the zoom downhill, and then slogged back home with the strong crosswind.

I ended with 10.2 miles today, so I ‘m just short of 35 miles for the weekend.  Maybe next weekend, I can make it to Craneway.

Walk, Run, Bike

So I’ve been on crutches many times in my life. (Relax, I’m fine.)

The first time was when I was 7, when I got a fracture in my lower leg from an accident involving a lawn aerator.

Then it seemed for the next few years of elementary school, I was suffering from an bacterial inflammation (if memory serves) in my hip joints that would alternate, and I’d be on crutches because it hurt so much to walk.

I was fine until after high school when on a trip to Germany and Austria with the local youth orchestra I jumped down some stairs, fell, and tore a ligament in my left ankle.

The same thing would happen later in college but to my right ankle.

It was when it happened in college, that I really began to miss walking on my own.  And running.  And bicycling.  Probably what made me miss it the most was that I was away from home with no one to care for me except my roommate and an ex-girlfriend who I got back together with because of her taking care of me.

This week, my job in Lodi finished a day early, and so Friday when I got home, I changed clothes and went for a bike ride.  If it wasn't been for the crosswind in the teens, I probably could have gone further, but I only made it to what Jennifer and I call Costco Point.  That’s about 15 miles round trip.  Today I did 19 miles stopping just before the Richmond shoreline park trail.  Same crosswind.

When I got home, my expense check was in, and I was too tired to get on my bike again and head to the bank.  So I rested, had lunch, and then walked along the Emeryville path to the bank. 

On the way back, I remembered a psychology class I had been taking for general education.  One of the questions we asked in it was “what is something people take for granted every day.”  I was on crutches at the time after the fall, and I said, “Walking.”

On the job site, I walk every day.  I walk around checking the perimeter.  I walk back and forth from task to task, checking on the other geologists, engineers, and/or scientists to make sure they are on track, on task, on schedule.  I should really track some day how much walking around I do during the day.

Tomorrow, I’m going for another ride to see if I can make it to Craneway Pavilion.  No matter how windy it is, and no matter how far I end of riding, I know I’ll enjoy it.

Pick a Color

So, when you were a kid, what color was dirt?  Brown, right?  and you used your Crayola brown crayon to color it.
Now let many years pass.
You’ve been through college.  You've worked for nearly a decade and a half.  And at work, you use the Munsell Soil Color Chart when describing the color of soil in boring logs.
Okay, maybe you don’t, but I do.
Oh yeah, that’s something else you learn in school; it’s soil not dirt.  People get all kinds of upset about that.
Now, the purpose of the Munsell is to allow anyone who should be looking at your soil descriptions in the future, will know that the soil was about the color of the chip on a specific page at the designated grid location.
So, today with my trusty, nearly-$300 book of colors, I’m describing soil.  Many were dark grayish brown.  A few were dark yellowish brown.  But a good quarter of them were…

BROWN.

To sum up: 9 years of college, 14 years of work experience, and I’m officially describing the soil as brown.
But I am getting paid to do it, so I guess that’s all right.

Not Much to Say

I've been busy lately with work, travelling for work, bike thefts, and stuff and sundry.  I couldn't not write about this though.

Today my Grandmother passed away.

Read my Mom's post.

Maybe I'll be able to say more later.

Did I Fall Asleep?

I got some more tattoo work done today.
The artist had an iPad he’s started using for reference images and colors.  We pulled up the post I did after I decided on the color.  And then I pulled up the one with the baby rocket on the cover.
And then, he got to work.
He used some lidocaine on the work he was doing, and it was mostly numb for the second hour.  I got kind of meditative, and zoned out for a bit of the work.
I’m very happy with how it’s going.  I’ll be going back in August for a longer session for the rocket exhaust and the shading of space.

Comics are Gay

So, yeah, let’s look at this.

DC Comics has made Alan Scott (now only of Earth-2) gay.  The legacy of Alan Scott is that he was the original Green Lantern written around the time of World War II.  I haven’t read the Earth-2 books yet, but I’m sure I’ll learn how it differs from the old pre-Crisis Earth-2.

But my problem with this is that there have been gay characters scattered around DC Comics for a long time.  I can remember when they revamped Superman in 1986 that the police commissioner of Metropolis was a Lesbian.  A stereotypical skinny lesbian with short hair and dark eyebrows, but she just was.  It wasn’t a big deal.

Then there was Alan Scott’s son Obsidian, who was openly gay.

Renee Montoya, a female cop from Gotham City who ended up taking over being the Question is gay.  And so is the recently introduced Batwoman.  Then there’s the lesbian couple of Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass in the Legion of Super-Heroes.

And okay, so I’ve named one gay man and several gay woman, but I’m sure there are other characters out there. (Oh, yeah, the villain turned hero Pied Piper was gay.)

This all just seems like pandering.